This is my third post related to my research into cultivation, medicinal value and spiritual insights regarding C. ruderalis. Now most of the information on the internet says that C.ruderalis has hardly any medicinal or psychoactive value compared to C. sativa and C.indca. My experience is to the contrary. Of course we also need to take into consideration the fact that this might be a variant/hybrid of C.ruderalis (please read my previous post under Cannabis Cultivation – II). Following are the insights I gained while high on C. ruderalis:

You need to bear in mind that I took Cannabis after a break of several months. Within an hour I got a physiological hit – drowsiness and burning of eyes; followed by a cerebral hit. The difference this time, compared to my earlier trips (which were on Bhang obtained from the market, so I’m not sure which species of Cannabis that was, probably a mixture of sativa and indica with some adulterants), was initially there was extreme drowsiness and I feared that I may fall asleep, however my mind cleared after some time.

There are two personalities within us, which we can call – the lower self and the higher self. The lower is more in touch with our sub-conscious fears and desires as compared to the higher, which only encounters them in our dreams. Under normal conditions this lower personality is suppressed/dormant. Under the influence of Cannabis it awakens and it also becomes receptive to the lower self of others. We can sense the subconscious fears of others.

We all have multiple selves, as I have reported in my earlier trip reports. We become more aware of these multiple selves withing us under Cannabis.

Present-moment awareness will make us more conscious of these multiple personalities under normal state.

I became more conscious/sensitive to the ‘beingness‘ of inanimate objects around me. As if they were ‘almost alive’.

The play of light and shadows near dusk time created an intense feeling of melancholy, and something else, which is difficult to describe. As if a part of me always exists in a parallel world/dimension. Is this the my subconscious world or some other dimension of my consciousness….?

Some of the above points may have an overlap with my earlier trip reports.

This state of mind, which I call ‘the inspired state’ lasted for a shorter time. This could be due to the fact that I had taken a smaller dose of bhang, and also because of the species of Cannabis was ruderalis.

Last week I had been suffering from a mild allergy for almost 12 hours – symptoms included running nose, sneezing and mild headache. Took half a spoon of home grown powdered cannabis (shade dried and ground in a mixer); boiled it at a low summer in a cup of water and half a teaspoon of milk cream plus some honey. Strained it and drank it hot. The allergy disappeared within an hour !!

I used the same variety/strain of C. ruderalis as mentioned in my previous post. Meanwhile I came across the following reference about the antiphlegmatic effect of Cannabis in the paper: ‘The Religious and Medicinal Uses of Cannabis in China, India and Tibet’ by MIA TOUW. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. Vol. 13(1) Jan-Mar, 1981:

Cannabis increases the “gastric fire” (i.e., digestion and,therefore, appetite), the “generative fire,” and it ismentioned in one of the earliest medical works, the SushrutaSamhita (of uncertain date with estimates ranging from 400B.C.-600 A.D.), as an antiphlegmatic . Taken inits literal current sense of mucus, this classification is quitecorrect for cannabis acts both as an expectorant andsuppresses the production of mucus.

This fact finds support in the Tibetan medicine also:

The next most commonly mentioned medical use ofcannabis in Tibet is for suppurative diseases, especiallysuppuration in the ears. The Tibetans consider the lattercondition to arise from “overmuch fluid in the head,”which cannabis is held to remedy (Kirilov 1893). Sincethey see it as an antiphlegmatic, they also employ itagainst colds (Shah & Joshi 1971; Jain & Trafader 1970)and rheumatism (Aldrich 1977; Sharma 1977a). Cannabisis respected as an antihelmintic (Snyder 1971).

During the last monsoon season, July-August 2014, I planted some Cannabis seeds in two pots using the locally available soil and dried cow dung as manure (the latter is easily available in India !!). I left the pots outdoors in my front yard. I got 90% germination. These seeds were randomly collected from ganja that a friend of mine smokes (mentioned in a previous post, part I under this category). However due to heavy rains and the pranks of my semi-wild kitten, only one plant survived to maturity. This goes to show that I was still not taking my project seriously !! Fortunately it turned out to be a female ! It is also three-leaved variety of Cannabis. Now some web sites including Wikipedia identify the three-leaved variety as Cannabis rudralis. They further tell you that:

“Cannabis ruderalis was first classified in 1924 by the Russian botanist D.E. Janischevsky. He came across cannabis plants growing wild in Central Russia, and noticed that they were different from the Hemp varieties (Cannabis sativa) grown throughout Asia and Europe. While much shorter than Cannabis sativa, the wild-growing plants were also unlike Cannabis indica, which was known for having intoxicating effects. As a result, Janischevsky concluded that a third species of cannabis existed.”

source: http://www.leafscience.com/2014/09/19/cannabis-ruderalis/

A research paper titled ‘ Genetic evidence for speciation in Cannabis (Cannabaceae)’ by Karl W Hilling states the following:

Sample populations of 157 Cannabis accessions of diverse geographic origin were surveyed for allozyme variation at 17 gene loci. The frequencies of 52 alleles were subjected to principal components analysis. A scatter plot revealed two major groups of accessions. The sativa gene pool includes fiber/seed land races from Europe, Asia Minor, and Central Asia, and ruderal populations from Eastern Europe. The indica gene pool includes fiber/seed land races from eastern Asia, narrow-leafleted drug strains from southern Asia, Africa, and Latin America, wide-leafleted drug strains from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and feral populations from India and Nepal. A third putative gene pool includes ruderal populations from Central Asia. None of the previous taxonomic concepts that were tested adequately circumscribe the sativa and indica gene pools. A polytypic concept of Cannabisis proposed, which recognizes three species, C. sativa, C. indica and C. ruderalis, and seven putative taxa.

Now the leaves of a typical C.ruderalis plant look like this:

And the leaves of the plant growing in my front yard looks like this:

Cannabis rudralis var. unknown. Giving out new leaves at the end of winter season.

So its similar to rudralis but not identical. The leaves are narrower and longer. Of the three major leaflets the central one is much longer than the remaining two, which is not the case in the C. rudralis diagram. The small pair of leaves/bracts/leaflets at the base are missing. However like rudralis, the plant is quite short, about one feet, has fewer flowers but unlike rudralis, they are intoxicating and have medicinal value which I shall be describing in my subsequent post under the category ‘trip report’ and ‘medical marijuana’.

I shall be posting some more photographs when it begins to flower profusely. I also intend to plant some more seeds this monsoon (Aug/Sep 2015).

This plant began to flower within two months – small clusters, not highly potent but potent enough for me !! It shed all its leaves during the winter months – Dec. to Jan. and has now started putting out leaves again. I can also see tiny flower buds peeping from the leaf nodes.

My conclusion: due to several years of cross breeding by humans we now have multiple hybrids and strains of Cannabis, and this is probably one of them.

I am based in Western part of India which has a semi-arid-coastal type of climate with The average maximum temperature during winter is 30 degrees Celsius while the minimum average temperature is 14 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature in Summer could go up to 40 degrees Celsius while the minimum remains around 25 Celsius degrees. It gets pretty warm and humid during the monsoon months from June to September.

First Attempts

I had asked a friend of mine who smokes Cannabis to save seeds for me. The dried Ganja that he used to get from his supplier, were allegedly from Rajasthan and appear to contain dried leaves, flower tops as well as some seeds. Clearly not a good quality but it became my source of seeds for planting.

At first I just sprinkled them at random in my backyard where some garden plants were already growing. This backyard had been abandoned by the gardener and was subjected to trampling, desiccation as well as water logging. But after several months I saw that a couple of my seeds had sprouted. I would water them once in a while, being not too serious about cultivating Cannabis. However in spite of all the abuse and neglect three plants did survive to maturity but unfortunately turned out to be males. They grew almost 10 to 12 feet tall and from their physical appearance seem to be of the sativa variety/species.

The Chinese character for hemp (麻 or má) depicts two plants under a shelter (source – Wikipedia)

Dear Readers I shall be adding a new category in my blog – ‘Attempts at Cannabis Cultivation’. Under this category I will be documenting my experiments in Cannabis cultivation under minimum resources and non-existent infra-structure.

I have been taking low doses of Cannabis (dried flower buds) orally and intermittently to heal my phlegm. It has been quite effective. It does not give me a strong ‘high’ but lulls me to a kind of ‘uncaring’ state of mind which makes me calm and a bit sleepy. It also stimulates my appetite and makes my taste buds more sensitive. The daily chores and routine seems to have been drained of their relevance…..

William James, courtesy Wikipedia

Meanwhile I came across the ‘trip report’ of William James, an American philosopher and psychologists. He gained popularity after publishing his book, ‘Varieties of Religious Experiences’. He inhaled Nitrous Oxide to get into an altered state of consciousness. When the drug wore off, James found that his mystical insights had disappeared. What remained were incomprehensible words–“tattered fragments” that seemed like “meaningless drivel.” Being a philosophical visionary rather than a garden-variety recreational drug user, however, James was not inclined to let his sober consciousness have the final say. On the contrary, he took his experiences with nitrous oxide as evidence that human life was more richly varied than he had previously (and soberly) imagined. “Some years ago,” he wrote in Varieties ,

I myself made some observations on . . . nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

For James, these alternate forms of consciousness were accessible only by way of artificial intoxicants. Others, he hypothesized, were able to reach them without the aid of drugs: in his view the great religious mystics, and certain mystical philosophers including Hegel, were “unusually susceptible” to these extraordinary forms of consciousness.

He believed that religious experiences are psychologically real–powerful and palpable events that can have important long-term consequences whether the beliefs to which they give rise are true or not . Drugs helped James to understand what religious belief was like from the inside. When he took nitrous oxide, he was for all intents and purposes a religious mystic. (“Thought deeper than speech!” he wrote while on the drug. “Oh my God, oh God, oh God!”) Nitrous oxide was the passport that allowed James to see religion from the believer’s perspective, traveling between the worlds of science and faith.

I think that a lot of us can identify with this experience and know exactly what he is talking about !!

Akh glyph in the Egyptian Pyramids symbolizing the union of soul and spirit after death. Source:Wikipedia

Regarding the death of the body and cessation of consciousness, Jung said the following:

Consciousness moves within narrow confines, within the brief
span of time between its beginning and its end, and shortened
by about a third by periods of sleep. The life of the body lasts
somewhat longer; it always begins earlier and, very often, it
ceases later than consciousness. Beginning and end are unavoidable
aspects of all processes. Yet on closer examination it is
extremely difficult to see where one process ends and another
begins, since events and processes, beginnings and endings,
merge into each other and form, strictly speaking, an indivisible
continuum. We divide the processes from one another for the
sake of discrimination and understanding, knowing full well that
at bottom every division is arbitrary and conventional. This procedure
in no way infringes the continuum of the world process,
for “beginning” and “end” are primarily necessities of conscious
cognition. We may establish with reasonable certainty that an
individual consciousness as it relates to ourselves has come to an
end. But whether this means that the continuity of the psychic
process is also interrupted remains doubtful, since the psyche’s
attachment to the brain can be affirmed with far less certitude

today than it could fifty years ago. Psychology must first digest
certain parapsychological facts, which it has hardly begun to do
as yet.

Long, long ago, some woodcutters from Kyoto went into the Kitayama mountains and lost their way. Not knowing which way to go, four or five of them were lamenting their condition when they heard a group of people coming from the depths of the mountains. The woodcutters were wondering suspiciously what sort of people it might be when four or five Buddhist nuns came out dancing and singing. Seeing them, the woodcutters became fearful, thinking things like, “Dancing, singing nuns are certainly not human beings but must be goblins or demons.” And when the nuns saw the men and started straight toward them, the woodcutters became very frightened and wondered, “How is it that nuns come thus out of the very depths of the mountains dancing and singing?”
The nuns then said, “Our appearance dancing and singing has no doubt frightened you. But we are simply nuns who live nearby. We came to pick flowers as offerings to Buddha, but after we had all entered the hills together we lost our way and couldn’t remember how to get out. Then we came upon some mushrooms, and although we wondered whether we might not be poisoned if we ate them, we were hungry and decided it was better to pick them than to starve to death. But after we had picked and roasted them we found they were quite delicious, and thinking, “Aren’t they fine!” we ate them. But then as we finished the mushrooms we found we couldn’t keep from dancing. Even as we were thinking, “How strange!” strangely enough we…” The woodcutters were no end surprised at this unusual story.
Now the woodcutters were very hungry so they thought, “Better than dying let’s ask for some too.” And they ate some of the numerous mushrooms that the nuns had picked, whereupon they also were compelled to dance. In that condition the nuns and the woodcutters laughed and danced round and round together. After a while the intoxication seemed to wear off and somehow they all found their separate ways home. After this the mushrooms came to be called maitake, dancing mushrooms.
When we think about it this is a striking story. For even though we still have this kind of mushroom, people who eat them do not dance. Thus this exceedingly strange story has been handed down.

Daijiten:
People who eat this mushroom get drunk. They may become extremely excited and dance and sing or see various hallucinations.

Needham Science and Civilization in China:

Thus all in all there is much reason for thinking that the ancient Taoists experimented systematically with hallucinogenic smokes, using techniques which arose directly out of liturgical observance. … At all events the incense-burner remained the centre of changes and transformations associated with worship, sacrifice, ascending perfume of sweet savour, fire, combustion, disintegration, transformation, vision, communication with spiritual beings, and assurances of immortality. Wai tan and nei tan met around the incense-burner. Might one not indeed think of it as their point of origin?[

Wu tsa tsu (Five-fold Miscellany) 1619:

There is also the ‘laughing fungus’: those who eat it laugh uncontrollably.

Pi-shu lu-hua by compiler Yeh Ment-te (1077-1148):

The valleys of Wen-tai about Mount Ssu-ming produce many mushrooms. However they are not all alike and some of those that are eaten prove to be poisonous. It is said that there was a Buddhist priest who taught [that when people ate such mushrooms if they would] dig up some dirt and mix it with cold water until it became muddy and then, after waiting a bit, drink the mixture, they would be restored to perfect health. I have seen this recipe myself. In the pharmacopeia of the hermit T’ao it is noted that this is called an “earth infusion” and that it will cure the effects of the maple-tree mushroom, which when eaten causes one to laugh uncontrollably and which is therefore known as the laughing fungus.

As I have already mentioned before that psychotropic drugs are not a one way ticket to enlightenment. They are like seeds that need to be sown in a fertile field. Human mind is like a barren field and needs to be ploughed and cleansed of impurities constantly, before it can yield a crop. It needs to be fertilized with pure and positive thoughts and intentions. Otherwise our minds will get trapped in weeds: self- created visions and illusions surfacing from the subconscious. I stopped experimenting with Cannabis because I felt that I had reached a plateau. The graph was no longer rising. The field needed to be ploughed and cleansed before I resumed my experiments.

Meanwhile I have been doing some research and noting down my own experiences in the twilight zone of parapsychology. These are some of the experiences I have had and continue to have on and off since I reached the age of thirty and much before my experiments with Cannabis. I shall be posting them on this blog.

I have also come to the conclusion that you need to have a certain amount of inborn/dormant sensitivity to the world within and around you, before a psychotropic drug can give you further insight into both the worlds.

However in later life, Jung tried to explain most of the ‘occult phenomenon’ that he came across on the basis of his theory of individual and universal subconscious:

The plurality of souls indicates a plurality of relatively autonomous
complexes that can behave like spirits. The soul-complexes
seem to belong to the ego and the loss of them appears pathological.
The opposite is true of spirit-complexes: their association
with the ego causes illness, and their dissociation from it
brings recovery. Accordingly, primitive pathology recognizes
two cause’s of illness: loss of soul, and possession by a spirit. The
two theories keep one another more or less balanced. We therefore
have to postulate the existence of unconscious complexes
that normally belong to the ego, and of those that normally
should not become associated with it. The former are the soul complexes,
the latter the spirit-complexes.
This distinction, common to most primitive beliefs, corresponds
exactly to my conception of the unconscious. According
to my view, the unconscious falls into two parts which should
be sharply distinguished from one another. One of them is thepersonal unconscious; it includes all those psychic contents
which have been forgotten during the course of the individual’s
life. Traces of them are still preserved in the unconscious, even
if all conscious memory of them has been lost. In addition, it
contains all subliminal impressions or perceptions which have
too little energy to reach consciousness. To these we must add
unconscious combinations of ideas that are still too feeble and
too indistinct to cross over the threshold. Finally, the personal

unconscious contains all psychic contents that are incompatible
with the conscious attitude. This comprises a whole group of
contents, chiefly those which appear morally, aesthetically, or
intellectually inadmissible and are repressed on account of their
incompatibility. A man cannot always think and feel the good,
the true, and the beautiful, and in trying to keep up an ideal
attitude everything that does not fit in with it is automatically
repressed. If, as is nearly always the case in a differentiated person,
one function, for instance thinking, is especially developed
and dominates consciousness, then feeling is thrust into the
background and largely falls into the unconscious.
The other part of the unconscious is what I call the impersonal
or collective unconscious. As the name indicates, its contents are
not personal but collective; that is, they do not belong to one
individual alone but to a whole group of individuals, and generally
to a whole nation, or even to the whole of mankind. These
contents are not acquired during the individual’s lifetime but are
products of innate forms and instincts. Although the child possesses
no inborn ideas, it nevertheless has a highly developed
brain which functions in a quite definite way. This brain is
inherited from its ancestors; it is the deposit of the psychic functioning
of the whole human race. The child therefore brings
with it an organ ready to function in the same way as it has
functioned throughout human history. In the brain the instincts
are preformed, and so are the primordial images which have
always been the basis of man’s thinking—the whole treasure house
of mythological motifs. It is, of course, not easy to prove
the existence of the collective unconscious in a normal person,
but occasionally mythological ideas are represented in his

dreams. These contents can be seen most clearly in cases of
mental derangement, especially in schizophrenia, where mythological
images often pour out in astonishing variety. Insane
people frequently produce combinations of ideas and symbols
that could never be accounted for by experiences in their individual
lives, but only by the history of the human mind. It is
an instance of primitive, mythological thinking, which reproduces
its own primordial images, and is not a reproduction of
conscious experiences.
The personal unconscious, then, contains complexes that
belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic
life. When any complex which ought to be associated with the
ego becomes unconscious, either by being repressed or by sinking
below the threshold, the individual experiences a sense of
loss. Conversely, when a lost complex is made conscious again,
for instance through psychotherapeutic treatment, he experiences
an increase of power. Many neuroses are cured in this
way. But when, on the other hand, a complex of the collective
unconscious becomes associated with the ego, i.e., becomes
conscious, it is felt as strange, uncanny, and at the same time
fascinating. At all events the conscious mind falls under its spell,
either feeling it as something pathological, or else being alienated
by it from normal life. The association of a collective content
with the ego always produces a state of alienation, because
something is added to the individual’s consciousness which
ought really to remain unconscious, that is, separated from the

ego. If the content can be removed from consciousness again,
the patient will feel relieved and more normal. The irruption
of these alien contents is a characteristic symptom marking
the onset of many mental illnesses. The patients are seized by
weird and monstrous thoughts, the whole world seems changed,
people have horrible, distorted faces, and so on.
While the contents of the personal unconscious are felt as
belonging to one’s own psyche, the contents of the collective
unconscious seem alien, as if they came from outside. The
reintegration of a personal complex has the effect of release and
often of healing, whereas the invasion of a complex from the
collective unconscious is a very disagreeable and even dangerous
phenomenon. The parallel with the primitive belief in souls and
spirits is obvious: souls correspond to the autonomous complexes
of the personal unconscious, and spirits to those of the
collective unconscious. We, from the scientific standpoint, prosaically
call the awful beings that dwell in the shadows of the
primeval forests “psychic complexes.” Yet if we consider the
extraordinary role played by the belief in souls and spirits in
the history of mankind, we cannot be content with merely establishing
the existence of such complexes, but must go rather
more deeply into their nature.

Jung’s final conclusion on this subject was – After collecting psychological experiences from many people and many
countries for fifty years, I no longer feel as certain as I did in 1919, when
I wrote this sentence. To put it bluntly, I doubt whether an exclusively psychological
approach can do justice to the phenomena in question. Not only the
findings of parapsychology, but my own theoretical reflections, outlined in
“On the Nature of the Psyche,” have led me to certain postulates which
touch on the realm of nuclear physics and the conception of the space-time
continuum. This opens up the whole question of the transpsychic reality
immediately underlying the psyche.